FitnessApp Begins

The strength training that I do is taxing and concentrating on form is what takes most of my focus. With dozens of workouts stacked up in memory, sometimes I lose track of where I am in sets during a workout, particularly as volume has increased. Was that the 5th set? Sometimes I think an abacus would help, but have settled on using little tags of painter’s tape lined up on a shelf in my garage (where I work out). I move them back and forth as I finish sets.

It’s crude, but it works.

In strength training, I usually do only a few exercises per workout, but as many as 10 sets, depending on the exercise. My warmups and mobility routines have a lot more exercises. It was a lot to keep track of, so I created timed PowerPoint decks to cue moving from one exercise to another. When I started rehab for my shoulder in late 2016, the PowerPoint decks became VERY elaborate. My workouts grew to have a dozen or more exercises, many that I did on both left and right sides. The decks were very useful in my rehab, but incredibly clunky.

Changing the decks is like this, though with less hernia.

All of this has collided with my desire to learn more code and Unity development. I have decided to create an app to support my workouts. Initially, I wasn’t sure what form this should take, but in discussing some Calisthenic Movement initiatives with Alex (they’re revamping their program materials), an image he showed me helped me get my head around what an interface for this app could look like. Bingo.

The app itself will essentially be an elaborate timer that cycles through a series of exercises with specific and customizable rep speeds and sound cues at each step. It will be a robust, data driven, and flexible version of my PowerPoint decks.

This is a bigger project than I am prepared to create on my own, so a couple weeks ago I reached out to friend, coder, and game developer, Tim Handley of Mindful Mammoth. We discussed the project briefly and have agreed to meet on a regular basis to chip away at this project.

BEHOLD!

As of July 15th, the boldly-named FitnessApp can read in a .csv generated from a Google Spreadsheet database of over 70 exercises.